


You Make Me Feel

by noangelsinthegarrison



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Castiel returns to the bunker straight after 9x23, Demon Dean Winchester, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s09e23, First Kiss, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Kind of a fix-it, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-26
Updated: 2014-05-26
Packaged: 2018-01-26 14:53:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1692371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noangelsinthegarrison/pseuds/noangelsinthegarrison
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Sam,” he croaks, voice thick, “Please. Tell me he’s alive.”</p><p>He’s a mess and he’s desperate. He’s scattered across the bunker floor like the burnt feathers of all his brothers and there’s no delirium sweet enough for him to believe he can pick up all the pieces.</p><p>But with two words, Sam gathers most of them.</p><p>“He’s alive.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Make Me Feel

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on [my tumblr](http://forgetmenotcas.tumblr.com/)

The first time Castiel’s body shook with fever it was newly human and flightless. He’d huddled in a homeless shelter somewhere in Colorado, warmed by both influenza and the wealth of human kindness as he was offered a dry spot of concrete and an old blanket. He’d shivered through days of high temperatures and sickness and tried to will the antibodies he’d inherited from Jimmy to fight a little harder.

He’d slipped in and out of consciousness as easily as his grace had slipped from his throat, and in his delirium he’d seen Dean’s face in every kind stranger he encountered. The morning his fever broke he watched a sparrow cleaning its wings and wondered whether he could find enough feathers, ripped from the angels’ burning wings and scattered lost across the Earth, to fashion himself a new pair. They didn’t need to last forever, didn’t need to get him far, but he’d watched the sparrow join its mate in their nest above and fallen back into darkness with Dean’s name on his lips.

This time when Castiel’s body shakes with fever it isn’t from sickness but from grief. Metatron’s sword dances behind his eyelids and the tears Castiel feels on his cheeks, so foreign, feel like Dean’s blood dripping tauntingly from the blade.

He’s left Hannah to clear up any mess left in heaven and if he’d been any kind of leader that decision would have been made out of trust. But it wasn’t and Castiel feels too tired to pretend it was. It was about convenience. She was there, she was willing and Castiel would have chosen any path that got him back to Dean sooner.

Castiel gets a cab to Lebanon and walks the rest of the way to the bunker. He doesn’t trust himself to drive and his hands are shaking too much to dial Sam’s number. He doesn’t think he could handle talking just yet anyway.

He’s not shaking when he finally gets to the bunker. He’s not too hot and he’s not too cold and he’s not slipping in and out of consciousness. But he misses his first bout of fever. He misses the happy kind of delirium where he could dream of flying his way to Dean’s side, of seeing a smiling face and freckled skin and finding home. He thinks of the sparrow as he raises his hand to knock and wonders whether its mate is still safe in their nest.

When Sam opens the door he isn’t crying and Castiel may have thought that strange if he’d been thinking clearly at all. Instead he falls forward and fists desperate hands into his shirt and Sam, surprised, lifts his arms to pull him through the door and runs a soothing hand between Castiel’s shoulder blades.

“Cas, man, you gotta breathe,” he says, worried, and it’s only then that Castiel realises his breathing’s all wrong. Too fast and too shallow and too loud. He’s not sure how to control it so he doesn’t.

“Sam,” he croaks, voice thick, “Please. Tell me he’s alive.”

He’s a mess and he’s desperate. He’s scattered across the bunker floor like the burnt feathers of all his brothers and there’s no delirium sweet enough for him to believe he can pick up all the pieces.

But with two words, Sam gathers most of them.

“He’s alive.”

Castiel’s knees buckle.

He’s crying again, or maybe still, he can feel the joy on his cheeks this time, hotter and thicker than blood and Sam has to grip his shoulders hard until he can stand on his own.

“Where is he?” he asks, relief tempering his desperation as he finally lets go of Sam’s shirt.

Sam sighs and looks away and Castiel feels the relief turn to ice down his spine.

“Sam,” he says, voice hard, “Where is he?”

“In his room,” Sam says gently, “But… Cas, the Mark of Cain, it brought him back.”

Castiel nods, “From death?”

“Yeah,” Sam squeezes his eyes shut, “But it didn’t… He’s not…”

Sam swallows hard, too loud in the silence and Castiel raises a hand to Sam’s arm, “Tell me, Sam,” he says and Sam sighs and opens his eyes.

“He’s a demon, Cas.”

And that’s all Castiel needs to hear. He’s heard the obscure tales, of course. The legends surrounding Cain and the Mark he bore. He knows how they got here and now he hears it, he should have seen this coming, but he’s too full of  _Dean being alive_  to be disappointed.

He squeezes Sam’s arm and steers him gently down the corridor towards his room. “Sleep,” he urges and Sam nods before disappearing into his room, and the fact that he’d stayed up until Castiel got here gives him hope that the brothers may be finding their way back to each other at last.

When he opens Dean’s door, his heart starts to ache. There’s grace inside him still, still tethering him to a species he no longer feels a part of, and yet he feels the fire in his chest all the same.

Dean doesn’t look up at him when he enters, nor when he shuts the door with an audible click. He sits silently on the edge of his bed, staring at his hands, and Castiel can’t bear the slump of his shoulders.

“I’m not human,” Castiel says and if anything Dean’s face, what little of it Castiel can see, crumples even more.

“It’s not the same, Cas,” he says, defeat colouring every word.

“No, I know,” Castiel moves forward and sits on the bed beside him, “That’s not what I mean.”

When Dean doesn’t say anything Castiel presses a knee against his thigh and keeps going, “Dean, what you  _are_  isn’t what matters. I’m an angel. I’ve been an angel for thousands of years, yet I’ve never felt like one with you.”

Dean frowns a little but still says nothing and Castiel takes a shaking hand in between both of his, “Do you understand that, Dean? Do you understand how much that means? You make me feel human.  _You_  make me  _feel_. And isn’t that what matters?”

Dean lets out a choked sound and reaches his free hand to rest quivering on top of their joined ones, “Cas, I – ” his breath hitches and he’s holding onto his hands like they’re his own collection of scorched feathers, “I don’t know what to do. I’m not – ”

“You are more worthy than any I have ever encountered, Dean Winchester,” Castiel says and he wants desperately to look into Dean’s eyes as he says it, but he still won’t look up from their hands.

“Yeah okay,” Dean laughs, short and bitter, “I don’t feel worthy.”

And Castiel almost wants to laugh at how little Dean has changed at all, at how ridiculous it is that this man, this  _beautiful_  man, could think he was worth so little. But he doesn’t. Instead he shifts even closer, until his chest is almost pressed up against Dean’s shoulder and his knee is firm and grounding against Dean’s thigh.

“Dean,” he says, soft and unwavering, “You are a demon through force and magic. Not through action and choice. What makes the demons we hunt  _evil_  is what twisted their souls to black in the first place. Yours was not twisted by anything other than a desire to save the world. No matter the technicalities,  _you_  are human.”

“I don’t feel human,” Dean says and when he looks up finally and turns his eyes to him, Castiel doesn’t flinch. They’re black and dull and lost and Castiel longs for the green that colours his thoughts, but he knows they’re still there. Dean will learn how to control them, and he’ll see them again before long.

He lifts a hand from Dean’s and presses a palm against a rough cheek. Dean’s breath is shaky and Castiel smiles, small and full of emotion, as he runs a gentle thumb across a freckled cheekbone.

“Cursed or not,” he says and Dean, momentarily thrown, frowns.

“What?”

“That’s what you said to me once,” Castiel says with a warmth spreading through his veins at the memory, “That you’d rather have me.  _Cursed or not._ ”

Dean’s lower lip trembles just slightly, barely noticeable, and Castiel struggles to keep his own steady. He releases Dean’s hands entirely and cups the other cheek too, and when he speaks his own voice is thick with feeling, “I need you too, Dean.”

And Dean crumbles. Eyes falling shut, his head falls forward to rest against Castiel’s own and Castiel closes his own eyes against the stinging behind them. Dean’s shoulders are shaking and his face is hot underneath Castiel’s palms and his hands reach up to cling to the trenchcoat like a lifeline.

It’s a while before either of them speaks and Castiel loses track of the seconds and wraps himself in the feel of Dean,  _alive,_  under his hands.

“Metatron told me you were dead,” Castiel whispers eventually, hands sliding up just a little to wind through Dean’s hair, “I thought, I thought you were,” he swallows, “Please don’t leave me again.”

Dean huffs a breath that Castiel feels on his lips and he shivers.

“Sucks to be left, doesn’t it?” Dean says, and it’s bitter and broken but also  _warm_  like he forgives.

“I never wanted to.” Castiel opens his eyes and leans his forehead away, desperate for Dean to open his eyes and see the sincerity in his face, but he doesn’t.

He does smile though, small and shaky but  _there_  and Castiel feels it all the way to his toes.

“Okay,” he whispers and when he opens his eyes they’re green and bright and  _alive_.

Castiel laughs a little breathlessly and runs his thumbs across the soft skin under Dean’s eyes. When he slides his hands down to cup his face, just under his jaw, Dean laughs weakly too and Castiel wants to weave it through his being like grace.

“I swear to you, Dean, we will find a way to fix this. We three, just like you said. But until then,” he says, moving a tender thumb over a full lip, “You’ve made me feel human for so many years. Let me return the favour.”

Dean laughs again, watery and hopeful and Castiel leans forward to catch the sound with his lips.

And when he kisses Dean he doesn’t even taste the sulphur. He tastes  _Dean_  and home and feathers becoming whole and he  _knows_  as Dean sighs into his mouth that they’ll get past this, that Dean is safe and whole and  _human_  where it matters. And somewhere upstairs he hopes Metatron is listening when he lets his voice carry across the dimensions and ring across all of heaven,

_Dean Winchester is saved._


End file.
